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Oil on plywood. Signed lower right: “J. Smetana 1943”.Label on reverse with inscription: “Smetana: Z Michle”. The city and its outskirts, the aesthetics of seemingly mundane neighborhoods, are themes that inspired the important Czech modern painter and printmaker Jan Smetana. In his work he placed great emphasis on light, lines, and color shades and saturation. He was a member of Group 42, the Art Section of Umělecká Beseda, the Hollar Association of Czech Graphic Artists, and later Group 58. He entered the Czech Technical University in 1936, where he majored in architecture and studied under Oldrich Oldrich Blazicek, Karel Pokorny and Cyril Bouda. On November 17, 1939, he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned until April 1940. From 1941 he studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague under Professor Antonin Strnadel, but remained there for just one year. After the war ended he graduated and became a teaching assistant under Martin Salcman at the Institute of Painting at Charles University's Faculty of Education in Prague. He left the school in 1950 to focus on his own work. Afterwards, he taught figurative and landscape painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Smetana first exhibited with Group 42, and he hosted his first solo exhibition at Prague's Topic Salon in 1948; a number of important collected exhibitions were held during his lifetime. The last exhibition of Smetana's work was held at the North Bohemian Gallery of Fine Art in Litomerice in 2006.